Four city Roads and Highways Division employees laid off last year are slated to return to work in the near future, according to city Safety-Service Director Al Hennon.

Callback letters are being drafted by Hennon, who noted that Mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry will review and authorize the mailing of the letters prior to sending them out. He was uncertain about the exact time the workers will return.

“They will be called back to work,” Hennon said Wednesday. “We expect it to be real quick here.”

An arbitrator’s decision in late December ruled the city improperly laid off the employees due to confusion on worker seniority, Hennon said. The layoffs were incorrectly based on overall service with the city, rather than seniority within the roads division.

“The department seniority should be the defining factor,” said Hennon, who declined to name the returning workers until the callbacks become official.

City Law Director Perry Stergios said the layoffs would have been challenged by the workers union either way.

“No matter which way you do it, someone was going to grieve it,” Stergios said of the seniority error.

Overall, seven workers were laid off in March 2013 following a transfer to the Roads and Highways Division, when the Solid Waste Department was shut down after the city privatized its garbage collection service.

Two of the three roads workers not returning resigned last year from the city altogether, according to Operations Superintendent Joe Berens, who oversees the roads division. He was unsure about the third former employee’s status.

Berens said the roads division presently has six workers, although one serves as a shopkeeper and the other is assigned to the city’s safety department, which handles traffic signals and signs. He appeared pleased to be getting some staff back to assist with fixing potholes and plowing streets.

“We definitely welcome back the help but can really use more than the four returning,” Berens said.

Berens said 17 workers were assigned to the Roads and Highways Division when he became superintendent in January 2012.